To Have and To Hold
by obsidians
Summary: Reno and Tifa have been secretly married for a long time she just can't seem to accept it. Warning: mrape in future chapters.
1. Chapter 1

Tifa felt like she was being watched even though she was completely alone in her apartment. She blushed at the absurdity of this as she packed her lingerie, knowing he liked to see it on her. She carefully took out the concealed ring and put it in her purse for later.

She took her suitcase downstairs and cheerfully pretended he wasn't sitting at the bar smuggly having a beer while she said goodbye to her friends as they thought she was going to visit her grandmother.

She wondered why people were so easily fooled when she had lost all her family in the fire that burnt down her town. Yet she invented a grandmother she religiously visited once a year at the same time and everyone accepted that without question.

"So you're going to see your grandmother?" Reno asked her in a perfectly innocent voice.

"Yes, she doesn't like to be alone this time of year. It's a special day for her" Tifa explained.

"Oh what is the special day?" Reno probed.

"Her wedding anniversary" she said looking right at him.

"Oh it's nice that you're going to be with her on such a special occasion. Have fun, yo" Reno said, clearly amused.

"I have to go, Barret's driving me to the airport" she said dismissively.

"I'll see you later" he said turning his attention back to his beer so that no one would see the amusement in his eyes. How he loved to put her on the spot!

He finished his beer, paid Yuffie for it, who was acting as bar manager with Tifa gone. He drove to airfield and got into the fighter jet he had managed to convince Rufus he needed to borrow for a week. He was already at his destination and checked into the hotel before Tifa's commercial flight even left the ground. He made sure all of his arrangements were in order; they were.

Getting a ring off the chain around his neck, he slipped it onto his ring finger as he did once a year. He hummed as he got into the black suit he'd brought and went to the bar to have another drink, knowing Tifa would want time to get ready in private. Besides, he liked to see her when she was dressed up in the clothes he'd bought her just as much as when she was naked.

The purple dress hung on the closet, it was modest by Tifa's standards and she knew it would fit her perfectly and would look beautiful on her. It was obviously expensive. It amused Tifa no end that Reno loved hitting on sluttily dressed women, but preferred modest dress for his own wife. He'd explained that he could go see her wearing her own attire any time when at the bar but when they were alone together, he didn't like other men staring at her. She smiled in irony at this. Reno mentally compartmentized so much in his life; that was what allowed him to do the job he did and not go insane.

She looked at herself in the mirror as she put on the black lace garter belt with sheer stockings and put the skimpy panties over top and slipped into the dress and stepped into the kitten heels provided. A quick hairbrush was all that was needed to complete her toilette and she went downstairs to where she knew he would be.

"Hello wife" he said, standing in greeting and kissing her on the cheek. He thought she looked beautiful and told her so

"Hello husband" she greeted in return.

"How's your grandmother doing?" he asked her facetiously.

"Let's just go eat" she suggested.

"Certainly" he said.

"You're wearing your ring" he observed when they received menus.

"And you're wearing yours" she said, glancing at him.

"I sometimes wonder what you do with it when you don't wear it. Do you put it at the bottom of your underwear drawer? Do you have a special ring box for it?" he asked her.

"None of your business" she said.

"I keep telling you; I can get this dissolved or divorce you whenever you want" he said. "But I think that even having a shadow husband to you is better than none at all. It is the sex? That you you're the only one on my insurance policy and shall receive a pension for life if something were to happen to me? Or perhaps you're not as indifferent to me as you pretend?" he inquired of her.

"You're the one that made me agree to celebrate our wedding anniversary this way. All of this must be expensive. Why bother" she demanded.

"I feel something like this should be celebrated. You're worth it. I don't force you to come and it's not like I mistreat you. You stay in the bridal suite with me of the nicest hotel in town and I treat you as my wife. I spoil you in every way possible and you were the one who got us into this in the first place" he reminded her.

"I shouldn't have listened to you, I was young and naive" Tifa insisted.

"You were barely eighteen when you found me badly injured, you got me the medical attention I needed. I'm grateful for that" he said.

"You were whining that you would die alone with never marrying. Why did I listen to you?" she snapped.

"You didn't have to have the hospital chaplain marry us, considering we were enemies at the time, but you did. I guess I must really have seemed like a lost cause to you. Because that's the kind person I got to know. I wasn't even supposed to have pulled through the surgery" he reminded her with a tender smile that she didn't return.

"I could have been a widow all this time" she said.

"What would the fun be in all of that? There wouldn't be us" he said, taking her hand.

"There isn't an us. I don't even know why you don't divorce me yourself. It's not like you're faithful, I have to watch you parade other women before me" she said.

"So you do get jealous? I was wondering if you even noticed while thinking of your valiant hero" he said in a voice laced with sarcasm. "Do you even like me?" he asked her.

"I care for you" she answered, feeling confused about him as ever. Loving how her body reacted to his, waking up sometimes in her lonely bed wishing he were there. Liking his company but craving the future she had envisioned for herself at the same time.

"You could have just left me alone in the hospital" he gently reminded her.

"You were technically my husband, of course I was going to visit you" she said and she had and her heart had been stirred by injured and helpless he was, causing her to do whatever she could for him. It made her happy when he responded to her kindness in turn. How grateful he was for her attention made her feel funny inside. She wondered why he seemed to get more handsome every time she saw him until it was like she was with him daily.

"The look on your face when the doctor said I was healthy enough to resume our sex life" he said and even she had to smile at this. "And we did have sex; eventually" he said.

"You were my first" she said.

"I guess you really must have wanted your dream wedding night if you had to settle for me?" he said keeping the bitterness from his voice.

"I didn't settle, I cared about you in my own way. I still do..." she offered.

"Yes, despite that my tattoos give me a comical look and you don't think much of my haircut" he said with a wink that made her crack up, he was so different from Cloud. He wasn't the sort of husband she had envisioned for herself, but there were moments when she wished she could claim him for what he actually was to her, despite repercussions from her friends. He made a good income, had a nice house that she frequented when she could get away and it was a nice escape from her constant loneliness. He was friendly, outgoing and obviously cared for her.

"Why do you want to see me for our anniversary every year?" she asked him.

"I have no family left. I don't celebrate any holidays. At least I have this with you. I haven't divorced you because I like the idea that someone will mourn me if I were to die on the job and benefit from it" he explained.

"What if I don't?" she asked him.

"You would. I know you like to hide how much you actually care about me" he said and raised a glass to toast her and she toasted him back.

Back at their suite, they undressed each other as their hands ran all over each other and she gasped and moaned as he took his time arousing her until she was aching with need. A single thrust into her caused her to orgasm and she held him tightly with all four limbs as he took her gently, but with just enough force to give her the friction she needed until she brokenly cried out his name again. She felt perfect, she always did. She was wet with need and gripped him so tightly. Tifa made love with her whole being and kiss after dizzying kiss were shared as they moved in perfect synchronicity until her final climax drew him over the edge and they came together. He held onto her just as tightly, it was only at this moment he felt she was completely his.

Tifa was the only woman Reno trusted not to use a condom with, he knew she was on the pill.

She lay in his arms. "Tell me you don't like this part?" he asked her.

"Must you be so crude? Of course I love having sex with you, but I should be having sex with the man I love" she said.

"So you don't think you will ever love me?" he asked her.

"Since when do you worry about that?" she asked him.

"I don't like being denied. I will win you" he insisted.

"I'm not yours for the taking" she said with pity in her voice.

"You practically live in my house, you could move in on a permanent basis. You could give up your bar. You wouldn't need it, AVALANCHE doesn't even exist anymore. You can do whatever you want. You spoke of wanting to become a pediatrician to treat sick children. I can finance that dream" he said persuasively.

"I'm sorry I can't be with you. I don't love you and therefore, can't take your money" she said.

"You're listed as my emergency contact, you're the first person they will call when I make you a widow" he bitterly said. "I shall not bother you anymore and call an end to these encounters. I'll have this marriage dissolved in a way that your friends shall never know it occurred. It's a simple document to be signed and registered I understand" he said getting up and starting to dress. "The hotel room is paid for until the end of the week, have everything charged to the room" he said going to repack.

"Wait, you're leaving?" she said, not wanting him too.

"I won't force you to spent time with me" he firmly said.

"Stay, you know I want you. You know I care" she said wrapping her arms around him and giving him a tight hug that always made him feel like he wished he could melt into her embrace and he gave in as ever. He could deny hundreds of people but never her.

He delivered her to her door after their time was through, her body coming down from the high of making love so much, to feel so worshipped and desired made her always feel she returned from her honeymoon. She clung to him a little longer than she realized she should as he kissed her goodbye. "Tomorrow night. I can come over before I open the bar and make us dinner" she offered between breathless kisses.

"I have to go on mission, no I can't tell you where" he said with regret in his voice.

"Please promise me to be careful, to keep yourself safe" she practically begged him, she wasn't indifferent to him, she worried about him when he was gone and found herself praying even when she wasn't religious. She prayed for both her men.

"I promise" he said and after more kisses goodbye. "You know if it's just a matter children...you and I could..." he suddenly offered before he could stop himself.

"What a funny joke. I know how much _you_ want children" Tifa said with a forced laugh.

"You're right, it was a joke" he said forcing one himself and realized he had been serious.

She went inside and unpacked and opened the special box she kept under lock and key and opened it. Inside was a photo taken of the two of them shortly after they married when he was convalescing, he's been twenty at the time and she eighteen.

He wore jeans, a t-shirt and a leather jacket and she wore something similar. The picture had been taken by another couple who insisted on taking one of them. She had protested, but he just put his arm around her and said, "smile for the picture" and she had. He still had the scars on this body that had almost ended his life and often traced them as was habit of hers after they made love.

Her friends knew nothing about them, but the Turks did. He had to report it after he woke up and realized it hadn't been a dream, he had a wife who was also their enemy. They had interrogated Tifa and realized she was fairly harmless and didn't want anyone finding out. He had put her on his insurance plan once they grew closer with her visits to see him first at the hospital and then his home. It was months before he was able to return to work and each day was spent with her until one night she didn't go home and became a woman in her young husband's arms and had been hooked on him ever since.

They both looked so young and hopeful in the picture as Tifa studied it, teetering on the brink of something that she'd never allowed to happen. Where had eight years gone? She wondered. She pulled off her ring and placed it in the ring box he had given the ring to her in. She kept other souvenirs of their time together in there too that he didn't know she had.

He got home and took off his own ring, he threaded it onto a chain he normally wore when off duty so he could conceal the ring beneath his clothes and hung it on a photo of them he always hid when she visited him. He wasn't the sentimental sort and it embarrassed him to display it.

It was taken on their last vacation, she wore a red dress. They had their arms wrapped around each other, she had been slightly tipsy on champagne and looked at him in such a winsome way that he had had it professionally framed and mounted. He had had engraved in silver letters below their photo "to have and to hold".


	2. Chapter 2

Reno found himself distracted on mission he had been assigned to go undercover as a young drug baron to seek out the source of a highly addictive substance and eliminate the supplier of the drug. He normally wasn't distracted as he normally worked with Rude on most missions, who kept him grounded, but this was a mission for him and him alone in a role he had played many times before.

He would have denied it that the source of his distraction was the week spent with his own wife. It was so nice to get together where they were acknowledged as a couple and could relax and just be together without fear of discovery or the distractions of life pulling them apart. There was something about Tifa that always made him long for her, not just the feeling of her soft skin on his own while they had sex, but how she talked to him and teased him, even the slightest kiss from her made his whole body tingle.

He hadn't known what to make of Tifa when he first had encountered her, he had never met a truly emphatic person who had been almost innocent in her devotion to saving the planet, making the world a better place and who needed to see good in everyone. Reno has grown up hard and knew only that no one did anything for free and it was a dog eat dog world where you did what you had to in order to survive. So it was decidedly weird for the young Turk to wake up to find out she had married him only to satisfy a wish he had never verbalized to anyone before in a moment of weakness when he thought he was facing death. It was merely curiosity that caused him not to annul it on the spot. He simply couldn't understand her motives. He asked her and she told him no one should die alone. Was it money she was after? He doubt she knew anything about his salary and it wasn't like he was rich.

Lust he knew was a great motivator but he didn't think she was that attracted to him in her need to keep bringing up the name of Cloud Strife as if to let him know she wasn't actually available. So she kept on showing up at the hospital bringing him homemade food and laundering his clothes as if there were something natural about their situation. She even started taking over some of the duties of the nurses. Yet he found himself getting to know her, it was like talking to a character from a movie about small town life. Her views were decidedly old fashioned in regards to the importance of love, the sanctity of married and the necessity of procreation. How man was not evil by nature and everyone was capable of greatness.

These were a foreign concept to the young but already cynical Reno, his views were much different, where he'd grown up watching those that couldn't help themselves starve to death was common. To fight was to survive and he had. He could even picture Tifa in a cheerleader's outfit shaking her pom poms at Cloud Strife. Then hauled that image in as that gave a tug in his groin to remind him how long it has been since he last gotten laid. Tifa may have been rather innocent in her views but she was decidedly attractive. Yet for her being rather naïve, things had happened to her too, she had shyly shown him the end of her scar and explained about her losing everyone she loved the day she received it and he felt guilty for his part in what happened for once in his life.

Finally he understood her motivations; she was lonely and had no one to talk to about her longing to start another family of her own but an injured Turk who couldn't tell any of her friends about her true feelings. He then wondered if Cloud would ever be up to the role she imagined him in. The Cloud Reno knew was distant and barely spoke.

Yet Reno found himself liking Tifa just for how nice and honest she was, there wasn't a deceptive bone in her body, where he saw thugs, she saw diamonds in the rough who could better themselves if given a chance. He sometimes wondered how she viewed him as she never seemed to judge nor scold him for what he was.

He was finally released from the hospital and the doctor who seemed to sense something between them instructed her that they would resume their sex life, but she had to be very gentle with him, she had looked like she would faint from embarrassment at this and then he wondered if she might actually be a virgin.

Reno had thought she would disappear when he left the hospital but was surprised when he found her in the car that came to collect him and he figured that Tseng must have thought her a soothing influence on him from his usual crotchety way of dealing with caregivers as he hated to be dependent on anyone. He wasn't happy with the nurse assigned to him, the Turks because of their level of secrecy were assigned only certain health care providers when injured on the job if they were single. They knew all the nurses and all dreaded Nurse Sandie Cameron, she was petite with a voice like the dulcet tones of a foghorn. Reno had hated her on sight and she took no pleasure in his company either. She didn't seem like the Turks in general but seem to take pleasure in tormenting Reno under the guise of seeing to his well being by treating him like he was a naughty school boy who needed to be upbraided for his unacceptable behaviour.

All who knew Reno, knew he slept in the nude, he was more comfortable that way and enjoyed the feeling of cool sheets on his naked skin. However, the sadistic bitch had managed to find some blue plaid pajamas perhaps from the last tenants of the cheap apartment he was living in. Tifa had been seeing to his luggage when she came in find him arguing with harridan as she tugged at the uniform he insisted on leaving the hospital in despite having to walk with a cane and his wrist broken and nursing his other arm that has been pulled out of joint. She had been attempting to undress him to put him into the flannel atrocities when Tifa ordered her from the room with a voice of authority that caused even the shrew to obey her.

"Can I undress you?" she asked him and he looked away with a slight blush but nodded.

"I can't sleep clothed" he explained.

"Then let's get you comfortable" Tifa said as she slipped his jacket down his arms and carefully put it aside. His shirt, she unbuttoned at his wrists with gentle hands and then undid the buttons of his shirt and that was removed too and she cast a look of sympathy at his surgical scar and he thought for a minute she longed to kiss it better. She sat him down on the bed after undoing and lowering his pants and he could have sworn her hands were trembling as she touched him as was unavoidable when it came to unfastening and removing clothes. She looked down as she removed first his shoes then socks. Then she looked up at his dark blue boxer shorts as if something in them was about to attack her. He would have been amused in other circumstances when not drugged up to his eyeballs and feeling out of it as result. She leaned up and took a hold of them and he eased himself up a bit as they were pulled down his legs.

She blushed and fiddled with his clothes, hanging his suit up and dropping his underwear and socks in the hamper after hastily throwing part of the blanket across his lap and he wasn't certain if it was for his modesty or her own.

He wondered at her extreme reaction, yes his latest surgical endeavour wasn't pleasant to look at and he had many other scars on his body from the way he lived before and now. But he worked out religiously as well as having an active lifestyle, he was lithe but still had an impressive build as he had been told many times. He wasn't a modest man when it came to his looks and was perfectly comfortable in his nudity. He knew he appealed to many women and had been told he was good in bed. Yet Tifa could hardly look at him without blushing as she tucked him into bed and he was surprised how her touch soothed him as she helped him into a comfortable position. He was half asleep when he questioned if perhaps he was the first man she had ever seen naked.

He didn't know what Tifa had said to Nurse Cameron but she deferred to his every wish for the duration of his recovery when Tifa wasn't there. Which she often was.

However, he soon figured out it was an escape from her own life. He sensed a loneliness in her and she seemed to like Reno as she was constantly with him, distracting him from his own natural bitchness about being incapacitated. She played video games with him, read to him, binge watched NetFlix with him, kept him amused and he found himself liking her. He had never met anyone like her before. She made him question if perhaps he wasn't meant to be alone.

People who knew Reno would have laughed at how long the seduction of his own wife took. He had long decided she wasn't interested in him that way and didn't try anything. It was her who finally kissed him she looked shocked when he had slipped his tongue into her mouth. Obviously no one had ever done that to her. He had taught her about french kissing and she took to it like a duck to water and that led to many frustrating make out sessions for him while she got more and more frisky but he dared not request anything from her. She kissed like a dream and the lines began to blur when she put her hands up his shirt one day and explored the length of his toned torso until he was shivering with need. His libido told him to go for it but his senses won out.

It was her that unfasten his pants while he was distracted and she jumped when he twitched in her hand. He never asked her if she was a virgin but this confirmed what he had long suspected but his hand covered hers and he wordlessly showed her how to pleasure a man until his long pent up essences coated her hand and he blushed when she tasted it and made a face.

The line had been crossed and there was no going back as he finally got to suckle upon her wondrous breasts as he marveled at how they would look when she got older. Her reaction to sexual stimulation was highly vocal but that was nothing compared to when he went down on her and saw with his own eyes the proof she was untouched.

She was the one who took him the first time as she sat on top of him as she initiated herself into womanhood, she was gentle with him as the doctor had bade her to be and it was almost like he was the woman at how she gently caressed him and kissed him before she impaled herself on him with a pained moan. He guided her hips until they caught a rhythm and it was over way too briefly but felt glorious as he orgasmed into the condom he wore and she had her first bodily orgasm at the same moment. He panted as he held her against him and noticed that she had automatically taken her weight off of him so she wouldn't aggravate his injuries.

He could only stare at her while she slept, confused by the feelings she inspired in him from just one sexual encounter. He was reminded of his first crush as it felt rather like it. Reno had been with lots of women from before and then from his days as a Turk, he liked pretty women and has slept with women younger then him and up to twenty years his senior. Some he had slept with under orders to seduce them to learn secrets they held by posing as their amorous lover. Nothing made a woman's lips open then an orgasm.

He had felt nothing during and upon their parting but Tifa inspired feelings in him almost foreign to him. He soon fell asleep dismissing it as his reaction to the pain killers and not being laid for a long time. However that didn't excuse how with each encounter he felt a lightness in his heart.

He healed and it was announced he was ready to return to duty and she seemed to lose interest in him. He was confused at first she still came to slept with him at the oddest times, sometimes he would even wake up to find her there in bed with him and wondered how she had managed to sneak in.

However there was no intimacy like before and finally he had sought her out and she admitted she was still in love with Cloud and although the lines had blurred when she was with him, she couldn't give him up.

Reno has been bitter about that and picked up the first woman he could find and pounded himself inside the nameless woman and then threw her out, hating how soiled he felt.

So he went to Tifa and made an arrangement with her, he would allow her to come to him and leave her alone as long as he got to vacation with her once a year for a week where they would be husband and wife in truth and she agreed. She had been confused about how lovingly he treated her during their time and bought rings for them both. That was the first of their wedding anniversaries.

Reno got used to their half life and stayed away other then coming to her bar and parading an array of young beauties before her when Cloud was in residence. He told himself he didn't care as he watched her as she looked at him with such longing as she never had Reno. Reno however did what he could without her knowledge, he added money to her account to keep the bills paid and personally took care of those that threatened her business. He took out an additional life insurance policy on himself, naming her two adopted children as the beneficiaries if she refused his insurance payout either way, she was going to protected financially whether she wanted to be or not. His will left everything to her, his widow's pension would go to her. For not wanting to be his actual wife, she was in every way financially. He did what she would allow him and then came the day she was wounded in battle and he realized he wasn't welcome as soon as he got to the hospital and her friends were there. He pretended he was there to see another person and left when he realized Cloud was with her, but it hurt to be denied like that.

That was nothing compared to the time both Cloud and Tifa were injured and he and Rude had seen them home, Rude had to carry Tifa because Reno didn't trust himself not to be able to let go of her as they lay them on the twin beds Reno was surprised to find in her apartment. Was it possible they still weren't sleeping together? Reno couldn't look at his own wife unconscious on the other bed, wanting to check her for injuries but instead had to stand there and wait for the blonde warrior to wake up. Cloud did soon and they had a conversation mainly to find out where the children were. Cloud looked at them with an emotionless expression on his face that hadn't changed to find the still unconscious Tifa on the bed beside his. He didn't say anything so Reno told him he was a real handful in a bored sounding voice and left.

Reno forced his mind back to the present as he concluded his drug purchase and stood up to greet the drug lord and his eyes went wide as he recognized the man who had similar tattoos of his. "Gavin; we meet again. I heard you became a Turk. Seize him" he ordered his men and Reno put up a great fight but a quick smack on the head and the world went black.

"What do you want us to do with him?" the men asked him.

"Put him in the cell" he ordered.

"Do you want us to interrogate him?" his guard asked him as they wrestled the unconscious man into an upright position.

The drug lord cupped his cheek "no I just want a little payback from him and I shall take it out on his flesh. Gavin was a pretty boy and it looks like he's improved with age" the other man said as he stroked Reno's slack lips.


	3. Chapter 3

Warning! ATTENTION: the following chapter contains male on male rape; please don't read it if you're squeamish.

Reno didn't even care to wager a guess what Daniel, his ex-gang member and at one time, best friend had planned for him. But suspected it wasn't anything good based on his history.

Reno had been responsible for him losing his place in their gang, to be homosexual was acceptable. But to find out that Daniel had been diddling kids was another thing altogether and not acceptable.

Reno was the one who caught him with the younger brother of his next door neighbour and it had sickened him to find the nine year old boy struggling as he raped him. It was Reno who had brought this to their leader's attention and had to sit in brutal silence as a person who was like a brother to him was systemically beaten and then had his tattoos removed with scalpels, before he was stripped of his patches and kicked out. Reno hadn't even tried to help him when he begged for it, it was forbidden and you don't mess with kids no matter how low you sunk.

His ex-friend was deceptively handsome, he wore his black hair long and dressed expensively, his eyes were baby blue and looked so guileless but Reno knew now he was a sociopath. Obviously he had become a chemist who specialized in deadly designer drugs and now he had Reno in his clutches, but for what reason Reno could not determine.

Reno was dragged from his cell by two men twice the size as himself and glared at Daniel, "what do you plan to do, torture me? Do your worst" he said smirking back at the man as if he had any advantage.

"You were always so pretty and cocksure, Gavin. I always admired that about you. I wonder how you filled out since you were teenager?" he asked him. With a nod, and cries of protest from Reno, the men pinning him in place ripped his jacket and then shirt off. He snarled as Daniel approached him and started touching him as if he were his lover. "Still slim and svelte I see? Very nice. You're older than I prefer, but I can make an exception in your case for an old friend" he said.

"What are you talking about?" Reno demanded when his hair tie was yanked from his ponytail so the thick strands tumbled down his back. He yelled in protest as he was bent over Daniel's desk and Daniel unfastened Reno's pants over his protests and pushed then down to his thighs and then his boxer short, Reno could only look over his shoulder as he brain finally registered what the man intended to do with him. No it had to be a joke! Not that!

"What are you…." He asked and shuddered as a hand caressed his buttocks in admiration and gave them an appreciative squeeze and a spank that caused him to jump.

"You always had a nice ass: smooth and pale, you never had a lot of hair on your body, just some red pubes and a dusting on your legs. With you bent over like this, you look about fourteen and I like that. It's because of you I lost my place in our gang and you're going to pay with your sweet ass" he said pinching it with a dangerous growl from Reno. "If you quietly lay down on that bed on your belly, I shall use lube or else I can take you pinned like you are. Your choice" Daniel whispered into his ear.

"Go fuck yourself" Reno snarled with more bravado then he felt.

"Not what I had in mind" Daniel said in disapproval as he drove himself into Reno's unprepared hole and Reno let out a pained cry before he suffered in silence as he was brutally taken in a way he had never wanted to be. His mind couldn't fathom what was happening to him as hands explored him gently in a parody of love making; stroking his chest, back, thighs and flaccid cock.

"Do you like that? Do you have a lover; a spouse perhaps? Is there someone at home missing you while I fuck you?" he taunted him. "Would you let me take them instead to spare you this?" he grunted and then he came hard into Reno's unwilling body. Reno gasped as the penis lodged in him was yanked away, pain, there was so much intimate pain such as he had never experienced that his eyes watered.

He was released and bought himself some time by pulling his pants and underwear up, not even wanting to think of the blood and sperm that leaked from him before looking up at Daniel defiantly. "There's no one! Do you worst to me. You're the coward that fucked a little kid, you got yourself expelled, not me. I see you got plastic surgery and had your tattoos restored when you have no right to wear them" he said in an even tone of voice when he ached in places he didn't want to think about.

"You're nice and tight and squirm deliciously. I look forward to doing this at least once a day to you. I think there is a woman you care a great deal about, if not love. Does she stroke your pretty hair and tell you you're the only man in the world for her? Does she kiss you goodnight? Is she worrying about you right now? Will she miss you if I were to kill you?" he asked him.

"There's no one!" he growled. "Can I go back to my cell now or to you intend to talk me to death?" he snapped impatiently.

Reno wrapped his arms around with himself, there were no cameras there that he could detect, he could feel his eyes fill with tears, in shock that he had been _raped_. He had always thought himself too tough to be, but all it took was a couple muscular goons to hold him in place and one sadist.

He longed for the comfort of Tifa's arms and almost gave into tears but he wasn't going to give his old friend, now enemy the satisfaction of seeing him break. He was still a Turk. He had no shower in his cell, only a toilet and sink, so lowering his pants,he cleaned himself up as best as he could, fearing infection.

He had never felt so helpless and friendless in the world and longed for Tifa again but was glad she wasn't there to see him brought so low. Perhaps seeing her being gangbanged in front of him. No, at least she was safe. That gave Reno a crumb of relief. He lay down in the hard bed, hugging himself against the cold as he ached in places he never had before and wished he were home with his wife. He realized he had been set up to fail and hoped the others would find him soon.

Every day it was the same thing but it got worse, Daniel would sometimes tie him to the bed and pleasure him before fucking him, endless asking questions about if his significant other did those things to him to? Always keeping Tifa in his mind's eye so it was like she was in the room with him watching as Daniel sucked him off or caressed him to hardness before fucking him gently, forcing him to experience unwilling pleasure with knowing hands. He would taunt him when Reno experienced an orgasm at his hands, claiming he enjoyed it.

Other times he would fuck him brutally and without mercy. Reno nightly cleaned himself in his cell as best as he could, allowed no access to a shower. He felt so low at this point he would have shot himself if given a gun.

His own thoughts of Tifa being that he couldn't be with her anymore. He wasn't a man anymore and didn't deserve her even if she had wanted him in the first place.

Unlike Cloud, Reno had no mako in his body. He was purely human and either could have contracted STDs or HIV that could turn into AIDS and kill him and he could pass it onto her. He still didn't show any weakness before Daniel and but wished he would die in the night, but the morning would come and so would Daniel with his fresh sexual tortures.

Rude and Elena finally tracked down where Reno was and killed everyone they encountered. The ringleader's tattoos gave them pause as they were like Reno's own and he surrendered without question and showed them where Reno was.

Finding him half naked and comatose in a cell and stinking, with greasy hair made their hearts go out to him as they helped him from his cell and locked the other man in.

When Elena recognized the smell of blood and stale sperm coming from Reno; she didn't think twice about shooting the caged man in the head at how Reno was looking at him.

Supporting him between them. They drove him to the clinic, none of them were modest people, you couldn't be when working with the opposite sex under conditions that allowed for little privacy. So both remained when the doctor asked Reno to undress, he didn't want to, but was used to following orders and removed the too large jacket Rude had given him for warmth and then his soiled pants and underwear. Elena moaned in distressed at the blood stains on his underwear.

The doctor examined him quickly in a professional way to allow the victim to retain his dignity as much as possible, ignoring the blood trails on his inner thighs from rough treatment before asking him to go shower and Reno silently left. He returned soon wearing a pair of scrubs as there was nothing else to clothe him in.

"Doctor, Reno has a wife. Shouldn't she be here? After all, he was…." Elena said. Elena was mystified by their relationship and didn't much care for Tifa for being so heartless with Reno's feelings at how she kept him at arm's length even after so many years. But sometimes she observed tender moments between them when they thought no one was looking, such things as seeing them out in public and holding hands when taking a stroll or a quick kiss on the cheek when meeting up for lunch. Affection of some sort did exist between them and she thought he needed all the emotional support he could get.

"I could go get her" Rude offered.

"The loving support of your spouse might help you" the doctor agreed. "In view of the circumstances."

"Nothing happened to me" Reno said.

"You were raped" Elena said and Reno flinched to have someone say it out loud.

"I don't have anyone in my life" Reno said, realizing that this was true.

"But Tifa.."Elena protested.

"Married me out of pity when she thought I was dying; there is nothing more between us besides the occasional hump" he said. "Are we done here? I wish to go home" he inquired of the doctor.

"You're dehydrated and malnourished but in decent shape otherwise" he said. "You should go home to your wife. TLC can be the best balm for the soul. You can't ignore what happened or deny it, you will need to take STD tests in two weeks and an HIV test at the same time and repeat them again in six months to be sure. You can have sex but be careful because condoms can break and you can infect your wife" he explained and Reno nodded, it was how he thought when he remembered how Tifa despised the feeling of condoms, she liked her sex with no barriers between them. So much so, that he had agreed to be careful with everyone but her while she took the pill. To be honest there hadn't been that many woman as she thought, Ren could easily take a woman out for a drink and ditch her rather than taking her to his bed. Now Reno couldn't risk having sex with Tifa without raising questions, she couldn't know. He had to let her go.

"Is there anything else?"he asked him.

"Just be glad you weren't a woman. You could have gotten pregnant. You're lucky about that" the doctor said.

"You're right, I'm _really_ lucky" Reno repeated in a hollow sounding voice.

Rude drove him home and he walked into his big, empty house.

Usually he texted Tifa a day before coming home and she would meet him at the door with a huge hug and kiss, they would eat dinner that she made and then spend the evening cuddling before going to bed to have sex to rejoice their reunion.

His place seemed so lonely without her there. He got out of the scrubs and took another shower, wondering if he would ever feel clean again. He looked in the mirror and noticed how his normally expressive eyes looked as bleak as a pair of pebbles in a storm.

He went to brush his hair and remembered how the twisted man had played with it. He got a pair of scissors and removed his ponytail with a final snip and threw it into the wastebasket. He decided next to get his tattoos removed and looked up cosmetic surgeons who specialized in that and made a request for a consultation online.

He wasn't shocked to get the text from Tseng saying he was on a paid leave of absence until the doctor felt he was ready to return to active duty. Having nothing else to do, he went to bed but found he couldn't sleep naked anymore and found the pajamas Nurse Cameron had tried to put him into and donned them. He still refused to give into tears as he lay in bed.

Tifa was wondering why Reno wasn't returning her texts and decided to drop by his place and leave him a note, she was shocked when he came to the door wearing pajamas in the afternoon. She threw her arms around him. "Why didn't you tell me you were home? I would have come over" she said with relief that he was okay in her voice.

He felt his eyes swim with tears to be held by the woman he had longed for in his time in the cell but got his emotions under control and pushed her back.

"I'm sorry but this isn't working out for me anymore" he said in a cold voice.

"What are you saying?" she asked him, feeling confused.

"As you said; there is no us. I don't see any point of continuing this charade. I'm not the one you want. You'll be hearing from my lawyer. I'll see you're provided for" he assured her.

"I've never wanted your money. How can you be so cold? Did something happen to you?" she demanded and he managed not to flinch at how astute she was.

"No, I just realize I don't want to compete with your dream. Marry Cloud, marry whoever you want. I've been foolish, I bought this big, stupid house with the idea that you would want to come live with me because you said you wanted a house. But not with me" he said gesturing by waving his arms around.

"I didn't know you did" she said in a soft voice, now realizing how much he had cared about her. Why had she never suspected?

"Hey I was twenty-two and apparently a gullible idiot when you would rather sleep in twin beds with your want-to-be husband in a crappy apartment. I mean, obviously every young _bachelor_ needs a four bedroom house with a solarium breakfast nook. The other three bedroom are all my mancaves" he said allowing the bitterness to creep into his voice.

"You never told me" she protested.

"You never suspected? Ironic. It's time I face reality. Leave, I don't need you" he ordered her.

"We sleep together. Doesn't that mean nothing to you?" she said with a sob that nearly made his heart break.

"You wanted a teacher and I taught you all I know; go show that to Cloud. I can easily get other lovers and they will be a hell of lot more honest with me about what they want from me when I take them to bed and won't pretend to care for me when they have an itch they want me to scratch" he crudely said and flinched back when she struck at him. She managed to stop herself in time.

"You flinched; you never flinch. You're wearing pajamas and you can't stand them. What's going on?" she demanded and then looked at him closer, realizing something was missing and ducked behind him. "You cut off your ponytail, what the hell?" she demanded.

"I felt it was time for a change. Just leave Tifa, I don't want you here. I don't love you and never did love you anymore than you do me" he snarled at her.

She flinched at this "but I…." she started.

"Yes I know, you care" he snapped. "This is getting old. Get out of my house and off my property, we'll be communicating through lawyers from now on" he said and she backed away until he slammed the door after her, she could only stare forlorn at the closed door and wondered why she felt like her heart was aching. His own was too as he hyperventilated into a paper bag he managed to snag as he had yet another panic attack. He had tried to act like nothing was wrong but the physiological effects of his rape had him firmly in his grip and he had thrown away the only person who might have been able to help him with her compassionate nature in his need to convince himself she was better off without him.


	4. Chapter 4

Reno got ready to go out, he had become a recluse and he realized that wasn't healthy for him.

He couldn't hardly leave his house and spent way too much time in bed feeling depressed.

His friends helped when they could, Elena had taken the wreckage that was his hair and trimmed it shorter so he had more of a young Billy Idol look going on, only with red spikes. Rude had driven him to his tattoo removal sessions, they were painful but he couldn't look at himself and not picture Daniel's smirking face as he...Reno took a bracing breath at this.

Tifa, he hadn't seen for over a month, he had got a divorce lawyer as promised and presented her with an uncontested divorce with a generous settlement that she had to only sign and his lawyer would file it. She would be free of him expect for being on his insurance and pension, but that didn't matter. You could put anyone on there that you wanted. She had made efforts to speak with him, to find out what was wrong, but he refused to answer her and she finally stopped.

Reno pulled the black wife beater over his head and got into well fitting distressed wear blue jeans that were just ripped enough to show off long, lithely muscular legs. His leather jacket and calf-high black leather motorcycle boots completed the outfit of his pickup clothes.

He remembered how this was Tifa's favourite outfit on him, how often she'd undone his jeans and they'd...his eyes swam with tears at the painful memory. He was used to the crying jags and knew now that he had needed to grieve. It was Elena who had made him submit to them when she put her arms around him one day and set him off by barking at him "let it out, fuckwit" and he finally had broken into sobs.

She was always after him to go for rape counseling and to come clean to Tifa and let her make up her own mind about wanting to be with him. But he couldn't, he remembered how Tifa only really showered him with attention when he ill or injured, clearly what he had imagined between them was pity or lust for when she came to spend the nights with him. This wasn't a healthy relationship for either of them, especially now that he couldn't sleep with her until he was sure that he wasn't...

He took a deep breath again; he could do this. He used to go out all the time, drink and get laid. It wasn't a big deal. He had bought the strongest condoms he could find and it wasn't like he was picking up, Scarlet was meeting him there. He didn't much care for her but she was beautiful and would get him back in the game. All he needed to do was get laid and he would be back to normal. No more moping about feeling sorry for himself and wondering if it was his fault somehow. No more stupid panic attacks. He would get laid and he would be fine. He would triumph over this and there was nothing more to it.

He grabbed his car keys and forced himself to get into his sports car and drove there with trembling hands. He forced himself to be calm and entered the dance club, he felt weirded out at how busy it was and how people were jostling into him. However, Scarlet was already there and signaled from a table and he joined her with what he thought was a cocky smile as he ordered the first of many drinks that night. She soon sat on his lap as they kissed, "I can't wait to fuck you" she said as she caressed his thighs, this caused him to open his eyes and he saw Daniel's grinning face instead of Scarlet's.

"I can't do this" he said standing up and dropped her onto her ass.

"What the fuck Reno?" she demanded standing up.

"I have to go, too many people" he said feeling his anxiety level rising.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she asked him, wondering why he was acting so strange.

Reno began hyperventilating and struggled to get his breathing under control, he didn't know what to do and this only made things worse. He felt like he was drowning. Help came in an unlikely form as blonde spiky hair and wide blue eyes came into his view. He was turned around. Arms went around him and hands massaged his diaphragm, pulling his back against a firm chest. "Breath with me; in and out slowly" the voice said taking in deep breaths himself and slowly exhaling to prompt Reno to do the same. "That's it, you're doing fine. Picture somewhere where you're comfortable and go there" Cloud instructed him, knowing exactly what Reno was going through and guided him. Reno tried to do this and he was soon in bed with Tifa when she ran her hands softly along his body after they made love. This always relaxed him.

Cloud had been having a drink with a friend when he had spotted Reno and Scarlet and watched them with lips thinned in disapproval. But figured they were both adults. He couldn't help witness the commotion at their table later on and came to help when he recognized the signs of Reno's distress.

"What's wrong with him?" Scarlet demanded as Cloud continued to coach him through his attack.

"I guess he recently experienced some trauma he hasn't fully recovered from. I suggest you take him home, all these people, lights and loud music aren't helping him" Cloud told her from experience.

"Yeah, like I want to play nursemaid to him on my night off" she said with a snort and left, Cloud watched her, thought she was a bitch and then turned Reno around and still kept his arms lightly about him to help support him.

"Hey Reno you'd better..." he said and then looked on in shock when Reno started flailing at him.

"What the fuck..." Cloud asked him pinning his arms to his sides.

"No, please don't. I don't want to" Reno pleaded and Cloud realized Reno wasn't seeing him.

"Did someone hurt you? Did someone force themself on you?" he softly asked him so no one else could hear and Reno's eyes went wide at this.

"Cloud, let go!" Reno demanded when he realized where he was. "You have no right to touch me; no one does" he said, sounding terrified.

"Let's get you home" Cloud said find his keys and making arrangements to keep his motorcycle at the bar overnight.

Reno had past out and he proved to be heavier than he looked as Cloud threw him over his shoulder and managed to locate his bedroom. He took off his boots and covered him with his jacket. Cloud's eyes were drawn to a picture from which a wedding ring hung on a chain. He was unsurprising by it as he flicked off the light and decided to sleep on Reno's couch and found a pillow and blanket, figuring a talk between them was long overdue.

Reno was hung over when he went into the kitchen for coffee and wondered how he got home. He didn't remember most of the night before. "You're heavier then you look" a voice suddenly said and Reno looked in shock to find Cloud preparing coffee.

"What are you doing here?" he asked him.

"Making coffee" he replied.

"I meant, in my place?" Reno asked him.

"You were drunk and had a panic attack and I took you home. Relax, I slept on your couch" he said to the tense looking man. "You're not my type" he assured him.

"What about Scarlet?" he asked him.

"I suggested she bring you home and she fucked off. How can you even think about sleeping with that bitch when you're married to Tifa?" Cloud asked him, turning to gauge his reaction.

"What are you talking about?" Reno said.

"Come on, I'm not stupid. I see how you look at each other and Tifa doesn't have a grandmother; both sets of her grandparents died when Nibelheim was set ablaze. I found a wedding certificate soon after you married and did some investigating and learned what happened. The priest was easy to bribe with a cheap bottle of wine. Relax, I'm not mad" Cloud assured him. "It's exactly the sort of thing Tifa would have done to comfort a dying man. I'm just surprised you allowed it to continue."

"But why not confront me about it years ago?" Reno asked him.

"Because I was hoping your marriage would work" Cloud said in all honesty.

"She doesn't love me" Reno admitted, not realizing he was giving himself away that he was in love with her.

"Only because she's not letting herself. Reno, can I be honest with you?" Cloud asked him.

"Sure" he said to him.

"I don't run a delivery service anymore. I bought a motorcycle repair shop a while back. That's where I go to" Cloud explained.

"So you have another woman?" Reno sharply asked him.

"No, I was in love with Aerith. Perhaps I will meet someone else someday. But for now, I just want to move on with my life and Tifa isn't letting me. I had a crush on her as a kid but so many bad things happened that involved us both that I can't see her as being a potential wife for myself. I will always care about her as a friend and be there for Denzel and Marlene but I can't be with her while Aerith is still in my heart. I need to move on with my life, establish another identity and find out what I want out of life. I want nothing to do with any Shinra anymore or any government. I want to be my own man without interference and that is what I always will get if I stay here" Cloud explained.

"Why did you never tell Tifa any of this?" Reno asked him.

"I've tried but she won't listen. She seems to think if she clings onto me that I shall come to my senses. She could be yours, but you have to change your approach. She wants honesty, you will have to tell her about what sort of man you were and let her judge for herself if she wants you. Also, these flashy vacations aren't necessary, she isn't materialistic. Rent a log cabin and spend the week together and she would enjoy that better. She's a homebody. Finally whatever happened to you to make you have panic attacks. Trust her, come clean and let her help you" Cloud said.

"I don't want to talk about that" Reno said.

"You don't have to, here's the name of my doctor who helped me through my own trauma, you can call him or not, or he can refer you to someone else if want professional help" Cloud said with no judgment in his voice. "Like I did and still do upon occasion."

Reno drank his coffee lost in thought at Cloud's revelation.

Elena got to her door when someone called her name.

"Tifa?" she said to her.

"What's going on? Reno refuses to contact me or answer his door when I come over. His last mission. What happened to him?" Tifa demanded.

"That's classified" Elena said automatically.

"You have to tell me, I know you don't approve of our relationship but he's my husband and I care about him and worry about him. Please tell me something" Tifa pleaded with her.

"Okay I will tell you. He was raped" Elena grimly said while Tifa's hands flew to her mouth in shock.

Reno finally let Tifa in when she pounded on his door for two hours, mainly concerned about the police being called on her.

"What do you want? I said I didn't want to see you. My lawyer contacted you, just sign the papers and ..." he said to her.

"I know what happened to you" she said.

"What are you talking about?" he demanded, drawing back. Surely she couldn't...

"I know you were raped. Why are you going through this alone? Please let me help you" she all but pleaded with him and he flinched when she tried to touch him. He didn't want her to touch him, to see him weak. She had to leave or he did.

"You weren't supposed to know. It doesn't concern you" he snapped while fighting off tears.

"I never signed the papers. We're still married and I love you" she said and then realized it was true.

"You're lying. Go away" he said and slammed the door in her face and went to video conference with Tseng. "I'm not getting any better and need to leave for at least a while for personal reasons" he explained.

"You're too valuable to lose" the other man stated and Reno normally would have agreed in a flippant way. Now he just looked grim.

"I didn't say forever, if I could just go into the witness protection program" he suggested.

"You want to go to Kemtpville?" Tseng said in shock. "You know it's in the country right?" he said to the confirmed city boy.

"I need to get away to clear my head" Reno said.

"Okay, I'll email you the details of your new life in a few hours. I'll send a car to pick you up" Tseng offered.

"I'll meet the plane at the airport" Reno said, he could still hear Tifa pleading with him to talk to her and knew he had to leave before he gave in to her. He waited until she left and packed his bags as quickly as possible, downloaded the information about his new identity and deleted the files on his computer and then drove to the airfield. He told himself that he was doing it for them both, he couldn't be husband to a wife who didn't love him. But he had to wonder why she'd lied.


	5. Chapter 5

Tseng was normally not the nervous sort but the murderous intent coming off Tifa Lockhart nee Sinclair was rather chilling. "I'm sorry you sent Reno into witness protection to protect him from his wife?" she slowly enunciated with disapproval.

"He asked to be placed there for personal reasons" Tseng said, actually feeling himself sweating under the scrutiny.

"And you didn't inquire what they were?" she asked him

"He's had…an incident happen on mission" Tseng said.

"Which he still hadn't recovered from, he was apparently suffered from depression to the point he was barely able to leave his place and was prone to panic attacks, yet you let him go to this unknown place by himself without any support whatsoever" Tifa snapped.

"I know where he is" Tseng said defensively.

"Great. Send me there" she ordered him.

"The whole point of witness protection is that he's being protected" Tseng said factiously.

"I'll tell you what, you give me a new identity and give me just two months to work on him and convince him to return. You need your second in command back and I need my husband" Tifa suggested.

"Oh very well. but he's not going to like it" Tseng snapped.

"I have to see with my own eyes that he's doing okay. Goodness knows what he's gotten up to" Tifa said with horror in her voice.

Ron "Rusty" Matheson faced his opponents and glared a challenge at them, he released his weapon and did a victory dance and took a long pull of his beer. "A perfect strike again. Beat that Rick" he said to his friend of two months.

Rick took off his baseball cap and sighed. "Why do you always bowl a perfect game? You sure you're not actually a bowling champion is disguise?"

"Nah, I just have great reflexes" Reno said propping his rented bowling shoes up on an empty seat and opening another beer from their bucket of iced ones as his friend bowled a perfect gutter ball with a growl.

Reno thought he would perish moving to a small town but he didn't mind it too much. The house he lived in was older it was true, but had all the modern of conveniences he insisted on: cable TV, internet and a decent set up sound wise. Even a pool.

It was located seven minutes from Kemptville itself; there was a smattering of decent restaurants, two malls and two grocery stores.

The Kars airfield he had supposedly purchased as fourteen miles away and he gave flight lessons and logged their numbers through proper channels, dealt with the maintenance of the place and the planes and did crop dusting for the local farmers. It was a tad boring after years of being so active, but it was peaceful at the same time.

He had thought he would become reclusive there as well, but his neighbours had all brought welcome to the neighbourhood sweet gifts of pies and cookies to the point he thought he would get diabetes and dinner invitations were heaped upon him.

Apparently small towns were boring places, so new people caused a sensation. He had gone to the obligatory dinners and explained the same thing to the spouses of people living there. To the men; he explained the absence of a woman in his life that "his ex-wife had taken him for all he as worth" and when it was the women only, he said "she had broken his heart when she left him for another man." Either way, it held the right amount of longing and bitterness to keep him single for a while due to his recent breakup. But there were no missing the looks of appreciation from the local single girls who longed to explore the whip thin man, whose clothes revealed teasing glimpses of lithe muscles. Reno had taken to buying his clothes at the local Co-op and dressed in the same plaid and denim combinations as the rest of the men in town. He even owned a baseball cap, but rarely wore it as it squashed his spikes.

Reno had always been a natural actor when he came to playing parts and he played Ron to the hilt. Ron was a city boy new to country life and often mystified with how to take care of his land. He had met Rick and his other friend, Ernie who according to them; knew each other since they used to swim in the local crick together. They had known each other all their lives, had married their high school sweethearts and inherited their families farms.

They had really gotten to know Reno when they found him attempting to wrestle a huge tree that had come down in a storm from across his driveway with his bare hands. They had come over and explained he either had to use a tractor to drag it away or a chainsaw to split it up. He looked at them like they were speaking another language and explained he had neither and they took pity on him.

One went to get his chainsaw and the other, his tractor. First they hauled it off his driveway and then started splitting it up and made a neat pile of the wood in the lean to he could never figure out the purpose for. He asked them, why they were putting it in there? They countered; so that he could start lying in wood for the winter. He said his house was heated with gas and they looked at him like he had grown another head, told him he had a perfectly decent fireplace in his place and he could use that to heat his place. Why burn money to heat a drafty older building when it wasn't necessary?

So they took the clueless Ron in hand and attempted to countrify him. Reno took to the character of Ron with a vengeance. Ron loved to drink at the local watering holes but never had too much that he couldn't drive home. He was a jovial man who was friendly and quick with a joke; he blended in just fine with the natives and never took himself too seriously. Ron was strong for his size and quick on his feet, agile to the point the local softball team longed to recruit him. Ron was polite and respectful of women and drew quite a few admiring glances and sighs of "if only" and had women wondering if his ex had been nuts for letting such a prize go.

The Reno inside him that he'd buried in his need to overcome what had happened to him, knew it was all a lie. Ron had never been taken against his will in the most humiliating ways possible, he had never lain awake waiting for the tap tap tap of the expensive boots of his rapist approaching him so that the nightmare could begin again. Ron had never felt an unwanted organ thrust into his body where it had no right to be. Had never had to reject the only woman who had been important to him because he didn't want to see the look of pity in her eyes and know she only cared about him when he was down. Had to flee that look of pity as well as her lies. However, Reno was buried way down in his consciousness while he acted the part of Ron, the devil-may-care hapless city slicker in the country.

"So are you going to try to take the fishing derby this year?" Ernie asked Rick when all three friends sat in Salamander, a local pub a couple of nights later.

"And I'm going to win" Rick boasted.

"He says that every year" Ernie said rolling his eyes. "He's out there all day long and never catches anything bigger than a minnow, he only ever catches the attention of every mosquito hereabouts and a sunburn" Ernie added, teasing his tall, brunette friend.

"I'm a great fisherman" he protested.

Reno laughed at this banter and adjusted the brim of his Senators cap, the local hockey team that he happened to be wearing that night for the first time in a long while. "Who wants to spend all day long trying to catch a slimy fish?" he asked them, finding many things they did odd.

"The first prize for biggest fish is a fifty inch flat screen TV" Rick explained, causing Reno to shrug his shoulders as he took a pull on his beer. He already had one. He liked to watch TV but mainly focused on the sports or comedy channels. He would always turn off the TV when footage of the President came on; seeing his fellow Turks beside him hit too close to home. He was content where he was but he felt he had deserted his post; it had been months since he even contacted any of them. Then there was the matter of Tifa...

"So you never seem to want to tell us what this wife of yours is like" Ernie, the short and stout blonde interrupted Reno's thoughts as if reading them.

"I tell you, she took me to the cleaners" he said automatically.

"Yes but how did you meet? How did you happen to marry? It's funny you know all about my relationship with Peggy and Rick's with Lorrie but we don't even know the first name of your ex-wife" Ernie reminded him.

"We were young went we met; I was twenty and she had just turned eighteen. We had seen each other around for a while but didn't really know each other that well. As to how we happened to marry, it was very sudden and early on in our relationship" Reno said, glossing over the whole thing. "Her name is Tifa" he added.

"Been there and done that. One second you're telling your woman that you want to wait until you're older and experienced more of life before you marry and the next thing you know, you're standing before a preacher wearing your best suit and promising to have and hold her forever" Rick cut in and Reno almost shivered at how that was what he had had engraved on the picture frame. He wondered at the odd shiver he had just experienced, it was almost like it was a premonition foreshadowing something.

"Well you did knock her up" Ernie reminded him.

"Details, details" Rick said. "So is she pretty?" he asked Reno.

"Gorgeous. She has the longest dark hair you would ever see and as for her body...I tell you..."

"Excuse me, I was told you gents live on Pelton Road" a familiar voice cut in.

Reno slowly turned and stood up in shock. Standing before him was Tifa, a vastly different version of her. She had her wealth of hair he had been bragging about back in a tight granny bun. She also wore clear lenses with black cat eye frames. She wore black collared blouse with white blazer over top and slim fitting black skirt went down to her shins. She also appeared to be wearing sheer black pantyhose and white medium pumps completed her outfit and she carried a handbag with the same motif.

"What are you…" Reno demanded.

"I'm Audrey Periwinkle, I was hired to be the new librarian at North Grenville Public Library, charmed I'm sure. I'm sorry were you mistaking me for someone else? I guess I just have one of those faces" Tifa said with a polite smile to his dubious look.

"Audrey Periwinkle huh? That sounds nice and made up" Reno mused.

"Yes, by my parents" Tifa said.

"I'm sorry…Miss how can we help you?" Ernie cut in, trying not to ogle her.

"The moving trucks were delayed to give me a ride and I have to get to my new home at 1004 Pelton Road. I don't want to impose on you gentlemen, but could one of you give me a ride? I was told by the bartender you all live on that road. I'm sorry, I don't even know your names. How rude of me" she said with a convincing blush.

"I'm Rick, this is Ernie and the smooth talker is Rusty" Rick said in a sarcastic voice.

"Rusty?" Tifa repeated, eyeing the way Reno was dressed and struggling not to laugh.

"Because of his hair, we couldn't resist. Don't get me wrong, we get gingers here but they're more like strawberry blonde. Not like him" Ernie explained.

"It's certainly suits him; Rusty" Tifa said in approval. "Now about the ride…."

"I would be happy…." Rick offered.

"Why thank you for volunteering, Rusty" Tifa said.

"But I didn't…." Reno protested.

"You're such a gentleman" she said.

"Can I finish my beer at least?" he asked her facetiously.

"You shouldn't drink and drive" she said all but towing him out the door to his friend's mystified look.

"What the hell was that?" Rick asked Ernie.

"I have no clue" Ernie said. "But I think our friend has met his match."

Tifa started chuckling when she saw Reno's red pickup truck and took in his appearance and cracked up in earnest.

"Get in" he said impatiently. "How did you find me?" he asked her.

"You're a creature of habit and it's Saturday, all the pubs are within walking distance, I just went from one to the other until I found you" she said with a shrug while he bristled.

He got into the driver's seat and hands grabbed his hat off his head and Tifa laughed at how his hair was in a side part. "Nice look, Farmer Reno" Tifa said taking in the tan unlaced Caterpillar boots, the blue jeans and matching blue unbuttoned denim shirt that was rolled up at the sleeves with a white t-shirt beneath.

"I'm trying to fit in" he sourly said. "What are you doing here?" he demanded of her.

"I came to bring you home" she said.

"I'm not going anywhere with you" he snapped back.

"It's not just that, the Turks are worn thin, Tseng needs you too" she said Reno felt guilty at this and looked down.

"Tseng was even suggesting I might consider becoming one" Tifa added.

"My wife will become a Turk over my dead body" he said before he could catch himself.

"Aw, I knew you cared" she said encouragingly.

"Assuming you didn't sign the papers" Reno said with a blush.

"I ripped those up at Cloud's suggestion" she said.

"What does Cloud have to do with this?" Reno demanded of her.

"Soon after you left, Cloud and I got together and we stayed up all night talking. I know all about his motorcycle shop and told him I approved of it" she explained.

"Talking huh?" Reno said in a dangerous voice.

"I explained how you seemed really concerned for me financially if anything, with adding me to this and that and yet never really tried to court me or anything and he suggested perhaps you never really had been in a relationship before and didn't know how married people acted. We were both pretty young after all. He then went on to say you probably have never been in love before and didn't know how to act either. So he said I need to come find you and fix our marriage" she said in a nonchalant way.

"I don't love you" he insisted, wondering if he was in some bizzaro world if his wife was talking about their relationship with her ex-boyfriend.

"Kiss me then" she insisted.

"I don't want to" he said when he stopped the car at the house that was located conveniently beside his.

"Prove it and kiss me" she insisted.

"Fine" he said and took her lips in a kiss and was shocked that his entire body started to tingle and his heart felt light. He leaned back, she seemed similarly effected. "See? Nothing" he lied.

"You're such a bad liar" she accused him."Come home, you need to stop hiding and face what happened to you" she said and then felt bad when it looked like she slapped him.

"You think I'm running away from my problems? I'm coping just fine and was better without you here to remind me. Go home Tifa" he said to her.

"I'm sorry" she said putting her hand on his and even the small touch felt like he could feel its warmth to his toes. "Did you ever get your final testing done?" she asked him.

"I keep putting it off, I'm not sleeping with anyone if you want to know" he said, wondering why he felt the need to tell her.

"You're still the only man I ever did" she said back and this made him feel slightly better. "Perhaps we can start over, get to know each other? We're both different people after all" she said.

"You can't stay here" he insisted.

"Yes I can, I have a proven identity and a job. Now I just need a potential boyfriend" she said eyeing him.

"Don't you even think about it" he objected.

"Those redneck friends of yours? Would they be interested in learning that if I stroke your tush and hum, "Fly Me to The Moon" it puts you to sleep?" she asked him a with her arms cross.

"That was a _particularly_ stressful night and I had to wake up early the next day and needed my sleep, it was only the one time…..okay maybe a _few_ times. It's very relaxing" he said at her look of disbelief. "I'm not going to pretend to be your suitor" he hotly insisted.

"Okay, I'll just have to think of another way to convince you" she said getting out. "Oh look, the trucks here" she observed.

"What other way?" he asked her suspiciously.

"You'll see. Want to come over for dinner?" she asked him.

"I have food" he insisted.

"Two Hungry-Man meals do not count as food, the cardboard tops tastes better. I have a lasagne packed in a cooler to be unpacked and thrown in the oven with that cheesy garlic bread you love so much, but I understand. Enjoy your frozen dinners. See you later, neighbour" she called as she shut the door to her temporary house with a final smile. Reno may have been blade thin, but he sure loved to eat and she was a great cook. That is how she got his attention in the first place.

Reno remembered back to the fishing conversation about bait and tackle and felt like he was a hapless fish caught on Tifa's hook and she was just biding her time to reel him in.


	6. Chapter 6

Tifa's experiences in Kemptville were vastly different from Reno's.

While he had been a slum dweller in Midgar and therefore, an inner city boy and played up the part up his part of ignorance for all things country related. Tifa was a small town/country girl and knew all about how small towns ticked and about farming. She knew how to plow a field and sow the grain, she knew how to hay, she knew gardening, she knew how to care for livestock and all the other things bred in the bone for a farmer's daughter. She knew about fishing and most importantly, she knew how to blend in then with natives.

When she had created her image as a small town librarian, she had gone over the top with her new look to the point Elena had criticized Tifa didn't look real. Then she had realized how Rude had been staring at her in an intoxicated way and had asked him why. He had blushed and admitted she looked like every man's fantasy of a naughty Librarian, so Tifa went with it.

She dressed ultra conservative when going to the library and wore softly feminine and still conservative outfit that allowed her beautiful figure to show but made her appear untouchable at the same time. Mind you, Audrey wasn't a prude, she had a wild streak and liked to get dressed up in revealing outfits once in a while and rode a motorcycle.

Tifa joined a lot of clubs right away and ran the library with the same efficiency she as had her bar and was amused when the amount of male readers doubled and single men were often dropping by to have her recommend books for them to read. She found their attention amusing as she had when running the bar but had no interest in them. She had her eyes on her prize.

Reno however, was not amused by how much attention Tifa was attracting her, her name was on everyone's lips and it was all he could do to restrain himself from punching some local bachelors as they speculated what she would be like in bed and explain to them that they were talking about his wife.

He wasn't the jealous sort, or so Reno liked to believe, but she was his, he felt as bothered by this as he had when seeing her dressing sexy at her bar and men staring at her. Tifa herself seemed oblivious to the attention she was receiving and would always smile and wave at him when she saw him.

Reno refused to interact with her and refused all dinner invitations, even when his mouth watered at the prospect of tasting her cooking again. He remembered that first time she had asked him when was the last time he had a home cooked meal when he was in the hospital. He answered in all honesty, his mother didn't cook much and Tifa had shown up with a huge plate of food for him.

Reno wasn't a reader and barely know the function of a library but now he seemed to haunt The North Grenville Public Library while not at the airfield to make certain that no one got too fresh with Tifa, she would just smile and wave at him while he pretended to read a book. Reno only really read up on the advances in weaponry online for the most part.

Tifa was of course a curiosity and perhaps thought to be a threat to the town wives at how much attention she was getting. They were happy to see she wasn't encouraging it and seemed to keep to herself if anything. They got to know her through her tireless dedication to the various clubs she belonged to and soon had the attention of the local gossip circle. She spoke how she had been engaged, but the man had left her and she had come to Kemptville for a fresh start. She added that there was a man of interest to her but he didn't seem to be interested in her. The old biddies sat on pins and needles as they managed to pry from the closed mouth young woman the name of the young swain who held her interest. She blushingly admitted it was the young pilot also new to town and the local biddies association played right into Tifa's hands as they approved that he was an outsider as well...and single and offered to help with her suit of him.

Reno was wondering when he suddenly got an influx of dinner invitations, but he was never one to turn free dinners down now that his own wife was...he didn't really know how to describe the situation at how many wonderful she meals she invited him to nightly and he always turned her down. However, sometimes leftovers would make their way to his place in plastic containers left on his porch and he would scarf himself. Sometimes, his bell would ring and there would be a generous piece of homemade apple pie with vanilla ice cream and cinnamon sprinkles as Tifa knew he enjoyed it. He felt compelled to eat it of course; the ice cream would melt and ruin it if he didn't.

He didn't understand what was motivating her. Surely it had to be more than reclaiming him, so he furtively searched her place when she wasn't there, only to find a note welcoming to her place, to his chagrin. It went on to say that she had left lunch in the fridge if he was hungry after breaking into her place. He ate the salad and huge roast beef sandwich with all the fixings she knew he enjoyed and went to leave, then scribbled "thank you" on the back of the note and left.

So Reno RSVP-ed to each invitation and soon found out that each place he went, Tifa was there and he was seated beside her while his hostess spoke of her virtues and how she was helping their community. Reno soon learned not to accept dinner invitations and still refused hers. He bristled at how she had somehow convinced people to try and get them together.

"It didn't work" he said to her in passing one morning as she got ready for her drive to the library in her non-descript little beige car and equally demure outfit that fitted her like a charm. Reno wondered why whenever he saw her dressed that way, he longed to take off her glasses, loosen her hair from her bun, rip open her dowdy blouse and shove up her skirt and take her. It was very disturbing.

"I see I shall have to resort to distract measures" she said to him, where he leaned against his pickup truck.

"Which is?" He asked.

"You'll see" she said, driving off after humming "Fly Me to The Moon" at him. She smirked at him as she departed.

He sighed that he had ever told her about that in the first place.

Flashback

It was soon after they became lovers and Tifa was staying over. She touched his back.  
"Reno you okay, you're tossing and turning?"

"I have an endurance test I have to pass early in the morning, first thing and if I do, I could possibly be promoted to second-in-command. I'm nervous" he admitted, only to her would he say such things.

"You need to sleep then" Tifa said turning to face him. "Is there something I can do to help?"she asked him.

"There is something that helps me sleep, but...it's too embarrassing, forget I mentioned it" Reno said turning his back on her.

"Come on, what is it?" Tifa asked him and he told her and she chuckled.

"See, I told you you would laugh at me" he said.

"Come here, put your head on the same pillow as me" she said and he arranged himself and sighed as she started stroking his buttocks and humming and was soon sleeping like a baby, Tifa gently kissed the top of his head and draped her arms lightly over him and fell asleep herself. She felt such a wave of tenderness towards him, Reno may have seemed like a bad ass who glorified in his bad boy image, but it was times like this she truly felt a connection with him.

End Flashback

Reno was having the Ernie and Rick come watch the hockey game with him when Tifa waved as she got back from the library and he politely waved back.

She went inside and emerged a few minutes later wearing forming fitting low-rise black leather booty shorts and a vest that was more like a black leather bra and motorcycle boots and carrying a motorcycle helmet. He could feel himself looking at her and was outside confronting her before he'd even realized that he'd moved. "I'm sorry are you going to spank someone's ass?" He demanded before he could stop himself.

"What business is that of yours, Rusty?" She sweetly asked him. "I'm going for a motorcycle ride" she said wheeling out what was Cloud's motorcycle.

"That's quite the bike" Ernie said.

"Can you handle that?" Rick asked, joining them.

"I have odd friends, I can ride this with no problem" she said. "It's a nice evening, so I thought I would take her for a spin" Tifa explained.

"Shouldn't you put on proper riding leathers?" Reno coldly asked her, not liking how the other men were looking at her.

"It's too hot for that. I'm fine the way I am. Honestly, you're not my father" she chided him as she put on her helmet, sat on it and roared off with the sight of her firm buns peeking out as the leather molded itself to her buttocks like a well fitting glove as Reno gnashed his teeth at her display. "Look it's a cardinal" he announced to distract the other men from staring at his wife's departing ass.

She came back an hour later and got off and put it into the storage shed. "You cause any accidents?" Reno asked from his porch where he was having some drinks. The other men were urging him to put on the game but he could not be persuaded to depart his chair, mosquitoes and all.

"No...oh look my begonias are coming in" she said bending way over and Ernie and Rick leaned forward in interest and then frowned when Rusty seemed to move with unnatural speed and his own ass was blocking the view of hers.

"Yes, very nice. Don't you think you should go change?" He asked her.

"You ready to pretend to be my beau?" She whispered to him as they both pretended to be engrossed in the flowers.

"No" he said.

"Then I'm just getting started" she said.

"How so?" he said cocking his head at her and she just smirked and headed inside.

A couple days later, she got home to find the three of them attempting to chop wood with an ax.

"Hey fellas, how's it going?" She called.

"Rusty's failing miserably. I think he's got the largest pile of kindling in town" Rick said with a chuckle.

"Let me get changed and I'll help you teach him" she said and they all froze when she came out in a white bikini top and frayed booty shorts that showed half of her buttocks.

"Fuck me" Rick swore.

"Aren't you worried about splinters?" Reno demanded.

"Oh this? I have bikini bottoms on as well and was hoping you would allow me a dip in your pool afterwards. I have gloves" she said donning them and stepping over to the block, she set a pick of wood on it and expertly chopped it in half as every part of her jiggled. "See? That's all you need to do, Rusty" she said to the three frozen men.

"You're a natural at that" Rick complimented her, trying to keep his eyes on her face.

"Come here, I'll show you how" Tifa said grabbing a hold of Rusty and he blushed to be inhaling her familiar scent while her firm body nestled against his and they both split the wood.

"Now try it alone" she encouraged him stepping back but he got distracted by her jiggle when she moved and caught the side of the log.

"Can I talk to you inside?" He asked her.

"Of course" she said and followed him inside.

"That bikini, it's going to turn completely transparent when it's wet?" He inquired.

"Yep" she said with a smirk. "You're the one who has a hang up about other men looking at me, not me" she reminded him.

"Well played" he said. "I am willing to pretend to be an infatuated friend if you'll stop" he said.

"Sorry, it seems I have to up the ante" she replied.

"By doing what?" He asked her and she just gave him a mysterious look.

He was answered a few days later at a town meeting. "Audrey has volunteered to be second prize in the fishing derby" the mayor announced as Tifa stood beside him wearing a well fitting sundress and several men whistled.

"What?" Reno said.

"She's going to be the date of the man for Valentine's Day Dance, who nets the second biggest fish in the derby. He has to be single" the mayor added.

"Fuck me, Ernie you're coming fishing with me" Reno demanded.

"Okay I'll pick you up at five am tomorrow, you have to spring for the beer" Ernie said.

"Five? Can't the fish sleep in a bit?" Reno said. "Okay five" he agreed at his look of reproach.

"This is a reel, this is your rod and..." Ernie was explaining when with a sigh of impatience, Reno thrust his taser into the river and turned it on and all the fish floated to the surface.

"What the hell is that thing?" Ernie asked him.

"Let's just say it's a personalized rod. You take this one, it's easiest the biggest and this one ought to take second" he said grabbing the two fish.

"What about all the others?" Ernie asked him.

"They're just in shock, they should be back to normal in twenty minutes" Reno said dismissively.

"You know, if you like Audrey, you could just _ask_ her on a date" Ernie ventured.

"She should wish I would, I'm not playing into her hands" Reno snapped as he wrinkled his nose at the cold feeling of the fish. His only experience with fish was when it was served on a plate.

Ernie beamed as he was given the flat screen TV while Reno scowled at his date for the dance. "What lengths you will go to claim me" she taunted him as their picture was taken for the paper as they both smiled.

"I'm not going to the dance and neither are you" he said as he let her out of his truck when they got home.

"Why not?" She demanded.

"It's personal" he said.

"You don't know how to dance, do you?" She guessed and noted how he blushed.

"You know where I grew, packing heat and learning how to defend yourself was much more of a priority" he snapped and was surprised when Tifa put her arms around him.

"You don't have to waltz or anything. Usually the women dance the fast songs together and dance the slow songs with their fellas. All you have to do is circle and sway with that person, like this" she explained moving the reluctant Reno into the rhythm.

He moved into the beat "this is it?" He asked her.

"You can hold me closer, it make up for the height difference, most women put their heads on the guy's shoulder like this" she said cuddling closer to him and he felt like his heart was racing to hold her so close again. He rested his chin on top of her head as they swayed together. It was awkward at first until they struck a rhythm. Somehow, dancing with her felt natural, he pulled back from her "I should go" he said when she laughed when his long neglected organ decided to poke her through his jeans.

"Stay for dinner" she suggested.

"Some other night, thanks for the dance lesson" he said and left with as much dignity as possible with his personal traitor jutting before him to be taken care of at home.

Reno was fussing with his appearance in a way he seldom did the night of the dance. He looked through his underwear drawer and debated wearing his normal cotton ones or the silk ones he wore when he knew he was going to score. There was something about the brand that looked just right on him, the woman's eyes were drawn to the rippling muscles of his chest and abdominal muscles above and then down to his long well molded legs, they shaped to his manhood and displayed it like a promise, guaranteeing a good time upon their removal.

He sighed at his foolishness and pulled on a pair of cotton ones, it wasn't like Tifa was going to see his underwear. He got into the black suit he'd chosen and slicked his hair back, one adjustment to his red tie and he was ready.

Tifa's eyes took in his appearance and smiled. "You look so handsome" she complimented him when she answered her door.

He could only stare at, her dress was formfitting with a cut up of a heart at the back of the bodice. She had a rose behind one ear and her hair had been arranged into messy curls. She looked so beautiful that he felt it was going to be a long, long night. "Shall we go?" he said in a pained voice.

At the dance, Reno was a perfect gentleman to the point he was dull, he danced every slow dance with Tifa and acted as a proper escort should and Tifa missed their intimacy from before. "Why are you acting all stiff?" She finally whispered to him.

"I'm here as your date, aren't I? Considering you made me jump through hoops for it. Do I have to remind you that I didn't ask you to follow me and didn't want you here?" He reminded her and she looked down, feeling hurt. He was so guarded around her even after she's been his neighbour for a month, declining all her invitations as an attempt to get closer to him.

"I want us to be how we were before" she said.

"Living a lie?" He snapped at her.

"At least we were happy together. How about you? Everything you did for me was to take place upon your demise, besides talking people out of opening new bars in my neighbour and taking care of people who threatened my business and sneaking me money. Yes I knew about that and that you had your sperm frozen in case I decided to have your children in the event of your death. What about when you're alive?" She asked him.

"You made it clear you didn't want me. You wanted Cloud. Tifa might I remind you, you fawned over me after my injury and visited me every day but you disappeared when I was healthy again. That's a cycle that you keep on repeating. I want to be desired as a man, not some frail patient" he explained.

"Yes that is why you came here rather then tell me what happened to you" she said with hurt in her voice.

He drew in a bracing breath "we should go. This conversation is too personal for public" he said.

They got back to her place and he excused himself to go change and returned wearing jeans a t-shirt. "Look, I care about you...I like you...I don't know how the hell I feel. You've been pulling me in and then kicking out of your life for eight years. Perhaps if you had claimed me?" he said and she looked away. "Yes I know that would have gone against what you believed in. But I wasn't a Shinra, I was just a yes man. I don't have any control over what orders come to me. I just executed them" he explained. "I ignored direct orders upon occasion for you when it came to capturing Cloud."

"For eight years my heart has been torn in two, wanting to live up to the pristine image everyone had of me of being the noble girl who would give up everything for Cloud, while wanting you, wanting to sleep with you, wanting to be with you" she said reaching out to touch his cheek and he flinched back.

"Tifa, just let me go. What we had never had a chance to grow, you saw to that. We've both grown apart. I did what I could to protect you. You owe me nothing" he said.

"You promised until death do us part" she reminded him.

"I was barely able to sign the marriage certificate and can only remember slurring at what the priest said. I did what I could, I don't know much about relationships. I'm offering you an out. I could have the papers drawn up again, you sign them and you can move on with your life. You can remarry" he offered to her.

Not until you give us another chance" she insisted.

Reno laughed, not able to help himself "you always were like a barnacle" he commented.

"Cloud always said I was the most stubborn woman alive" she replied and it was like a barrier broke between them and they started to reminisce about old times. Tifa went to refill their glasses and smiled to find Reno was asleep, arranged him so he lay on her couch and covered him with a blanket and turned in for the night. She bolted awake a few hours later when Reno's cries woke her.

"Please stop, I don't want to" he whimpered. "No" he screamed and Tifa spoke to him, knowing better than to touch him until he was awake. "Tifa?" He said, still disoriented from his nightmare.

"Reno, it's okay" Tifa said as she pulled him into her embrace and wiped away the tears that he didn't know he was still shedding.

"No, let me alone. I don't want to you see me like this" he said wrenching himself out of her embrace and standing before her.

"Is that why you left? You thought I would think less of you. I don't. You're as brave and strong as you always were. What happened to you was not your fault." she said, advancing on him.

"Stay back" he said.

"You're still the man I married" she said.

"I don't want you to see me as being weak" he blurted out.

"I don't, I see you as I have seen you. You have a chip on your shoulder and a rebellious streak a mile wide and are as stubborn as anything. You have come so far in life and I'm proud of you" Tifa said.

"Proud of me, but...he said and then her arms around him.

"No more running away. I'm staying right here with you. You can't deny what happened to you; let me help you through this" Tifa pleaded with him.

"I don't want you to see me like this" he pleaded back in a shaky voice.

"If it had been me, would you reject me?" She asked him leaning back to look at him. His eyes looked wide and confused.

"He would have been dead the second he violated you" Reno snarled.

"Your guy is dead, but not to you. I can be there for you, we can get through this together" Tifa encouraged him.

"To court me is perhaps to court death. It's another month before I can have the final tests. I can't sleep with you until I know. If the condom we used were to break…." he said.

"Then we won't sleep together, there are other ways to satisfy each other. We just have to be careful" Tifa said.

"I'm willing to accept your terms. I shall pretend to be your suitor but only until the final tests results come in" Reno said.

"Let's go to bed then" Tifa said taking his hand.

"But I just said" he protested but allowed him to lead her to her bedroom.

"I think we could both use a night snuggling and nothing sets tongues wagging in a small town like a man leaving a woman's place in the morning" Tifa said taking him to bed and he allowed it while falling asleep in her embrace as she fondled his buttocks and hummed a certain tune to him.


	7. Chapter 7

Reno woke up in the snowy white sheets of Tifa's bed as she ran her hands along his nude skin. Tifa even from the first was a caresser, she liked to explore and tease all of him. Tracing old scars, running her fingers along the hard planes of his muscular chest. He liked that she did this at how subtle her touches were on him until he shivered with need. Most of the women he had been with went directly for the parts that interested them the most and seemed impatient to arouse him so they could get the show on the road. However, Tifa reveled in slow seduction.

Reno turned his head and plump lips captured his own.

He had to admit that he liked being in so slow moving a place as Kemptville with her, they both had jobs and responsibilities but it was so much different. He wasn't forever working strange hours and going on missions and she didn't keep late hours anymore that made it necessary for them to connect before her bar hours or afterwards. They now had all the time in the world for each other.

His hand cupped her cheek and drew her warm body towards his. Reno laughed when she playfully rubbed her nose against his. Tifa smiled at him from her place on the pillow, it was early morning hours and they would have to get up soon.

He worked the same hours that the library was open, nine until six. Reno mainly did maintenance on the property and the planes there, gave his lessons and was there in the office should people that rented hangars for their gliders and tow planes need something. Being in Kemptville was so peaceful for the ex-city slum dweller. He sometimes wondered if he had ever known such peace.

Reno had had a very active life until then and welcomed it more than he thought he would. He and Tifa had moved into his place as it was larger and were supposedly living in sin, not that anyone seemed to mind as they went places together. It was nice to be able to hold her hand with having to worry about someone spotting them. They weren't a controversial couple as they were in real life. He was Rusty and she was Audrey and they lived as those people. He would come home to her every night and spend time with her, it was so peaceful. Sometimes Reno imagined what his life would have been like if he had been born a different person, perhaps even in Kemptville. What would it have been like to attend the local high school and marry one of the few women he had ever been with? Be the boy next door, like Cloud was to Tifa, crushing on a pretty young girl you watched become a woman right in front of you. A younger Reno would have scoffed at this, loving living on high adrenaline. But the older him felt he would have enjoyed this life if he still had Tifa in it and she liked being Audrey, she loved her lifestyle, she love her job and she loved being with him.

"Come on, admit you love me" she said as she did every morning, leaning up.

"Show you me you love me" he countered with a smirk.

"Again?" she said as she softly caressed that part he most like being touched.

"Now that's dirty pool. Are you going to put out the fire you started?" he asked her and moaned when she ran her hands down his body caressing him downwards, he shivered at how her hair tickled him as she slid lower.

"Tifa don't forget..." he said and a hand came up and showed him the condom she'd already palmed. He groaned as she put it in him with a combination of hands and lips and he was soon writhing under her oral caresses that were indescribably good as her small hands caressed his testicles and he soon cried out in orgasm. She leaned back and removed the condom from him and dropped it into a wastepaper basket.

"My turn" he said reaching for a dental dam" but her hand stilled his.

"I wanted this time to be just about you" she promised him and he felt a tug at his heart at this. They were sexually active but within the strict confines of having extremely safe sex. He loved it because it was her, but longed for their earlier intimacy. He longed to give himself to her in every way, to satisfy her like the man he had once been had so easily without a second thought. He knew she didn't think him less as a man. He had told her everything about his past he had been holding back, who he had been, where he had been and also about Daniel, he had had an embarrassing breakdown and she had comforted him and promised him she wanted and still loved him. This had made it worse until finally she had shown him how much she cared with her hands and mouth and he lay in her arms afterwards feeling if anything, healed. Tifa had always been the perfect balm to his troubled soul. He had never realized he had been lonely until she came into his life.

"But what if I want to hear from moaning my name?" He said as she sat up to pulled on her robe and he drew her back.

"Sorry, we have an appointment this morning" she said.

"What appointment?" He asked her suspiciously.

"With a doctor at a private clinic. Reno, it's time" she said and he didn't realize he'd gone ridged until she put her hands on his shoulders and smoothed his bangs back.

"I don't know if I can" he admitted.

"We have to know, we're in this together. I will be right there with you. We'll both be tested so no one will be suspicious" she assured him.

"Why wouldn't they be suspicious?" He asked her and she just smirked at him in a way that was reminiscence of his own smirk.

"You see, we haven't officially made love yet. I'm a reborn virgin blessed by the Goddess and have to wait until marriage. Rusty has been so patient with me" Tifa said as she sat before the doctor holding his hand. Reno could see the question in the doctor's eyes when he looked at the lush body of Tifa even conservatively dressed and himself. Reno could feel himself blushing. "Just because I'm a reborn virgin doesn't mean I haven't been around the block a few times with bad boys. Before we marry, I want us both to be tested for STDs and HIV and whatever else you think necessary" Tifa said lowering her eyes in such a convincing display of feminine modesty that even Reno almost believed it. "I hope this doesn't seem too weird" she added and lowered her eyes again.

"No it's a good idea" the doctor encouraged them. "Are you okay with this?" He asked Reno.

"I would do anything for my future wife" he said in what he hoped was the sappy voice of infatuation he hadn't experienced since he had slept with his first girl. He could still painfully remember the incredibly bad love poetry he has wrote for her and how someone had discovered his notebook and read it aloud over the intercom. Neither him or his new lover could even look at each other after that, his poetry was that painfully bad.

"You need to take this request for testing to the lab and get your blood work done and I'll call you in a week when I get the results" the doctor told them.

Tifa went first and insisted Reno hold her hand. They drew the blood, he realized she had insisted on this to offer support when it was his turn. She could feel how clammy his hand was in nervousness and smiled encouragingly at him, her eyes full of warmth and support. She had always supportive him even when she didn't believe in what he did for a living. It was at the moment he realized just how special she was, his physiological healing had much improve with her support and he felt lucky to have her.

"It's over, a week and we'll have the results" she said as she took his hand as they walked back to his truck.

"What if the results aren't good. I couldn't be a Turk anymore and we..." he said in a forlorn voice. Not able to add where they would no longer be together.

"Then we'll stay here and you will continue to run your airfield and I'll stay with you or we'll find another place to go and decide who we want to be. It doesn't matter to me as long as I get to be with you" she promised him.

"You would give up your life for me?" He asked her.

"You are my life" she said.

"But that would mean you would watch me die" he bluntly said.

"I intend to see you bald and fat someday" she said.

"Do you really have to phrase it like that?" Reno asked her sourly.

"I'm sure you'll look great bald. Come on we need to keep you distracted for the next week. Putting a rock garden in ought to help you. All that digging, mulching and hauling rocks" she said.

"I can hardly wait" Reno said sourly and she quirked a smile at him.

They exited the doctor's office carrying their test results a week later. "I can't look at it" Reno said, his hands were trembling so much that he could hardly open the envelope. Tifa had been driving for that purpose and pulled over and took it from him. She opened it and read out the results, neither were the concerned about the STD but one by one she read them off; they were negative. "HIV, negative" she read out and Reno got out and walked into the unploughed field there and stood beneath the shade of a tree.

Tifa joined him. "Are you okay?" She asked him and laughed when he let out a whoop, picked her up and spun her around as her skirt and hair flew around. She let out a giggle until his mouth captured hers and he lay her down in the tall grass. They barely seemed to think as his fly was undone and her skirt pushed up and panties removed. He knew in his mind that she liked it slow sweet and gentle but it had simply been too long for the both of them. It was over too briefly and was extremely intense, Tifa soon cried her joy to the sky and neither really acknowledge their mutual declarations of love. Reno collapsed on Tifa almost insensible at the intensity of their coitus, barely managing to keep most of his weight off of her. He looked down at her, "looks like we have to plan a wedding" was his observation.

"But we're already married" she said grinning from ear to ear.

"No one else knows that and the community is going to expect it. Will you marry me?" He asked her.

She answered by throwing her arms around and kissing him, that he was asking her while his organ softened in her didn't matter, it didn't have to be romantic, it was him choosing to marry her after all those years.

He leaned back "Tifa I would love to make love with you again. But can we go home and do it there? Ants are crawling on me" he said.

"Sounds good, rocks are sticking into my back" she said and they laughing got redressed.

"You're going to rejoin the Turks?" She asked him.

"I have to, there are so few of us now" he said.

"I'm going with you" she insisted.

"Of course, we have to move you into my house when we get back. But not before you plan a wedding, I want the works: horrible bridesmaids dresses and you in a white dress" he insisted in a flippant way.

Later That Night

Reno leaned back feeling like he couldn't contain the tender emotions for the woman beneath him, "I love you, I do. I've been fighting it for so long because I thought there was no future for us. I'm sorry I made you wait so long to hear it. I want you, I want us. Only you, I promise" he declared in a rush with so much emotion in his voice.

Tifa reached for him "I love you too but can we please continue..." she practically begged him, her orgasm lingering right on the cusp.

"Right, oh sorry" he said and continued.

All the ex-AVALANCHE members were shocked when they got the letter from Cloud explaining about Tifa's and Reno's secret marriage. There was much complaining, lots of swearing and then acceptance that Reno wasn't a bad match for Tifa. They had all calmed down when their wedding invitations arrived and all RSVP-ed. Yuffie was already in Kemptville helping Tifa plan the wedding where she would be the maid of honour and Elena, a bridesmaid along with Shera. Their dresses were a horrible bubblegum pink, guaranteed to make them look hideous and they all wore them with pride.

The locals were wondering who everyone was and especially were staring at the black man with the gun arm and the man with the red cape and eyes to match, but they were obviously great friends of the bride at how she hugged them all and wept as she hugged to children. They were hustled off to put on their outfits as junior bridesmaids and that of a junior groomsman.

When a huge aircraft loomed overhead, everyone gaped as a large, blonde muscular man in this forties got out. But that was nothing compared to when a stretch limousine pulled into the wedding venue, the two men who got out to secure the premises couldn't have been more different but were dressed the same. One was Wutaian and one Hispanic looking. They secured the area for the final occupant and everyone whispered as President Shinra got out and everyone else realized that other men were his Turks.

"A Shinra and Turks at the same wedding. It's even worst that a Turk is marrying ex-AVALANCHE member" Cid muttered to Vincent, who just wordlessly patted his back in a sympathetic way and led him to the open bar.

Reno was struggling to tie his tuxedo tie as he normally didn't wear them. "You need some help?" A familiar voice asked him.

"Who invited you?" Reno asked him.

"Your wife, I certainly wouldn't attend my best friend's wedding, that would be Tifa, not you" Cloud said stepping forward and tying it for Reno and he let him.

"Thanks" Reno said to his former enemy and rival.

"How you holding up?" Cloud whispered to him.

"I'm taking it a day at a time. Tifa is helping me a lot" Reno admitted.

"That's all you can do. She's a natural healer, just let her help you" Cloud said, clapping him on the shoulder.

"Why am I so nervous? I've been married to her for eight years" Reno asked him.

"Because you have the whole dog and pony show this time with all it's bells and whistles and all those people staring at you. You're not simply waking up and saying, "what wife?" this time. I'm sure you'll do fine. And if you ever cheat on her or hurt her, myself and the rest of us will make you pay, Turk" Cloud said before leaving with a smirk on his face.

Tifa looked so beautiful in her white dress and veil that Reno's eyes misted over as Barret looking surprising dignified and well polished as he walked her down the aisle. Ernie and Rick were also groomsmen and their wives, Tifa's other bridesmaids. They knew who the couple actually were as they had taken them into confidence about their true identities. Both Reno and Tifa were going to miss Kemptville, but duty called for him and she was scheduled to get her GED so she could start her premed classes.

Tifa interrupted when the officiant said their fake names. "No, I Tifa Lockhart do take Reno Sinclair to be my lawfully wedded husband" she correct him and Reno smiled at her and repeated that in turn and they kissed when it was announced they were husband and wife.

The reception was memorial where Elena got drunk and started chasing Tseng around after she caught Tifa's bouquet with the protesting officiant in tow. Rufus was found making out with Yuffie and Tifa scolded Reno when he had decided to make a signature drink that included the local over proof moonshine and everyone get hammered. At the end of the night, the entire town waved goodbye as the helicopter Rufus had loaned to Reno to go on honeymoon with rose into the sky bound for Coast Del Sol with the bride and groom in it. It had 'Just Married" written on the side and they waved goodbye to all their new friends.

After their honeymoon was over, Reno and Tifa returned to what was now both their home. Yuffie had had Tifa's stuff packed up taken to the place, leaving her keepsakes, knick knacks and mementos in their boxes to be decided where the couple wished to place them. Reno carried the well suntanned Tifa over the threshold upon their arrival home, yet he somehow had managed to remain ghostly pale. "So this is where we shall be living" he commented as she studied it with an eye towards refurnishing to to both their tastes. "I suppose we'll have a new bed that hasn't been nightly defiled by random women" she said quirking a grin at him.

"I have a confession to make. You're the only woman who has ever slept in that bed with me. I took other women to an apartment that belongs to the Turks, it just didn't seem right to take other women to where I sleep with my wife" he explained.

"I knew you had an old fashioned streak in there somewhere" Tifa said with triumph and he just smiled back, glad to be at home with her.

A Month Later

Tifa looked up from where she was studying when Reno got home, he kissed her and sat down with her. "How was your day, I know; it's classified" she said rolling her eyes.

"I'm being sent on mission tomorrow" he said.

"Not a solo one?" she said narrowing her eyes at him.

"Rude going with me, we don't do solo ones anymore" he promised her, giving her the scout's honour sign.

"You'll be careful and keep yourself out of harm's way" she demanded of him.

"You know my primary job is to put myself in harm's way" he said to her. 'I'll come home to you, I promise. I always will" he said sealing that with a kiss.

"Good because I would hate to become a widow and our child to be born without knowing its father" she said resuming her studying.

"You won't be...what child, I thought you were on the pill" he said.

"I already started dinner, but should go check on the roast" she said getting up.

"Wait how did this happen?" He demanded.

"When a man and a woman love each other, they hug in a certain way..." Tifa said.

"You know what I mean" he emphatically said.

"You're not that only one who can be sneaky. After waiting for eight years to start a family, why wait another second? Surely you aren't mad" she said hugging him.

"No, like I could deny you anything" he said and they shared a tender kiss.


End file.
